The head of the Kansas Health Policy Authority is in Washington, D.C. today along with top health officials from a handful of other states to talk with federal officials about the ramifications of health reform.
Marcia Nielsen, executive director of the health policy authority, was one of six state leaders tapped by the National Academy for State Health Policy to join a group whose aim is to make national leaders aware of the potential ramifications for states as Congress and the White House craft a federal health reform plan.
“States must be proactive in explaining the complex implications of seemingly simple federal provisions,” Alan Weil, director of the academy, wrote to Nielsen in a Feb. 6 letter inviting her participation in the project.
Specific details about Nielsen’s activities while in Washington with the group or with whom the members would be meeting weren’t immediately forthcoming from health policy authority officials or those at the National Academy for State Health Policy, which is based in Portland, Maine.
The other state officials participating are:
• Kim Belshe, secretary of the California Health and Human Services Agency;
• Joan Henneberry, executive director of the Colorado Department of Health Care Policy and Financing;
• Alan Levine, secretary of the Louisiana Department of Health and Hospitals;
• Trish Riley, director of the Maine Governor’s Office of Health Policy and Finance; and
• David Sundwall, executive director of Utah Department of Health.